


Watch Me Go Blind

by lefthandofglory, RuinsPlume



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bondage, Canon Compliant, Comeplay, Community: rs_games, Dysfunctional Family, Feels, First Time, Literary Porn, M/M, Marauders' Era, Masturbation, Mentions of Animagus Bestiality, Mentions of past self-harm, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Queer Themes, R/S Games 2017, Smut, Voyeurism, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-01-10 09:14:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12296076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lefthandofglory/pseuds/lefthandofglory, https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuinsPlume/pseuds/RuinsPlume
Summary: R/S Games 2017 - Day 11 - Team SiriusIn which our heroes uncover a very well-kept secret. And about damn time, too.





	Watch Me Go Blind

**Author's Note:**

> **Team:** Sirius  
>  **Title:** Watch Me Go Blind  
>  **Rating:** Explicit  
>  **Warnings:** Marauders’ Era, Werewolves, Dysfunctional Families, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Come Play, First Time, Bondage, Bestiality, Brief Mention of Past Self-Harm, Voyeurism  
>  **Genres:** Porn With Plot, feels, Marauder’s era  
>  **Word Count:** 20,000  
>  **Summary:** In which our heroes uncover a very well-kept secret. And about damn time, too.  
>  **Notes:** Grateful thanks to Shaggydogstail, for the eagle-eyed beta and infinite patience.  
>  **Prompt:** #31 - "The smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us..." — Marcel Proust

Sirius stands on the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place and pulls his red-and-gold scarf a little tighter around his neck. Remus looks over at him, lip not quite quirking up. It steadies him, like Remus always does. 

Still, Sirius shakes a little, inside. What’s he thinking, bringing a half-blood werewolf to dinner? Not that his family knows either of those things—he’d told them Remus was one of the pure-blood French L’eauPins, the first of his family to go to Hogwarts rather than Beauxbatons. He hadn’t quite gotten around to telling Remus that, but he’s a smart bloke, right? He’ll understand. Besides, it probably won’t come up and if it does, Remus can roll with it. 

“Is this like garlic and vampires?” Remus tugs on the fringe of Sirius’s scarf. “A Gryffindor muffler keeps the Slytherins away?”

Sirius grins back at him and touches the door knocker. “I wish,” he says as the door opens, like it always will to a pure-blood heir. Mother acts like she can disinherit him, but she can’t. Not as far as the house is concerned. Which is a bloody shame, Sirius is starting to think more and more. He’d be better off shut of this whole place. He damn well won’t set foot in this place when he’s older—Azkaban itself can’t be as bad as any house with Mother in it. She’s practically the only living Dementor, right?

Sirius steps inside, Remus at his side. The foyer is empty, thank fuck. Kreacher must be down in the kitchen preparing dinner, Father won’t be back from hunting yet, and the days when Mother met him at the door are long over. Her portrait hangs on the wall, though, large as life, as eerily motionless as the girls in the Muggle posters on his walls upstairs. It won’t come to life until Mother dies, of course. Until then it’s as dead as she’s alive, judgmental stare notwithstanding.

“That’s going on the bonfire,” Sirius says, crossing his arms and glaring right back at it as the door closes behind them. “She’s barmy if she thinks I’m keeping that around.”

Remus looks up at it, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You might feel differently when you’re older. When she’s gone. It’ll be your only way to talk to her.”

Sirius barks out a laugh. “Only way that’s staying up is if her Sticking Charms are as good as mine. And nobody’s got Sticking Charms like me.” He can’t quite look at Remus as he says that. He’d stuck to Remus since first year, hadn’t he? Even before he’d understood quite why he wanted to follow Remus everywhere, why the sight of cool brown eyes in a male face had made him want to preen and clown every bit as badly as James for Lily. 

“Into the belly of the beast?” Remus gestures towards the stairs with an ironic flick of his hand. 

Sirius wants to make a rude joke about beasts and bellies but he doesn’t. It cuts a little too close to home these days. Remus won’t discuss anything that even touches on the wolf. “Yeah. Right then. Come on,” Sirius says and leads the way upstairs. 

Remus follows, the stairs swaying in a slightly alarming way, groaning underneath their feet. He kindly doesn’t comment on the state of the house. They don’t lack the galleons to repair the place, Sirius knows. That’s not the problem. Mother just doesn’t want to get anyone in to fix it. Can’t risk what an outsider might find—and report to the Ministry-no doubt. Traditionally speaking, the Blacks have been Dark as they come. The walls are probably insulated with dead bodies, Sirius thinks with a roll of his eyes as he thumps onto the first floor landing. 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Remus is pausing in the hallway, a look on his face that Sirius knows from endless prior pranks. It means ‘what have you got me into now, Sirius?’.

“Of course. It’s fine.” Sirius scoffs, as per their usual exchange. It’s how this always goes—Remus says, in not so many words, that whatever they’re doing is stupid and they should stop, and Sirius or James says it’s fine and fun and just a laugh and then they do it and they all get in terrible trouble and end up spending the next month scrubbing out the grindylow tanks. He heads into the dining room, thinking it can’t be worse than that. Right? Grindylow bites bloody hurt.

Mother is already in here over at the drinks cart, making herself a Muddled Muggle with the last of the vodka. Father’s going to be left with nothing but gin tonight. Not that he’ll mind. Or notice, as long as Mother gets a half-carafe or so of red wine down his throat first. 

Sirius points Remus to his place, right next to his own. A table leg quietly appears in front of Remus’s chair, meaning he’ll have to scoot a little closer to Sirius if he wants to pull his seat up to the table. Sirius gives the table a pat of thanks as Remus rolls his eyes. Sirius might have a love/hate relationship with the house itself, but the furniture’s always been good to him.

Regulus is already at table, bollock-licker that he is. Sirius gives him a disdainful look, then turns away before he can catch the hurt in his brother’s eyes. As if Sirius didn’t remember it used to be the two of them against the Madness-that-is-Mother. 

Mother turns, drink in hand. She moves slowly, deliberately, to the table, with that exaggerated care that says she’s already on her third cocktail. Her eyes flick up and down Sirius, her lip curling up as she notices his scarf. “How kind of you to return for the holiday.” She examines Remus with rather more care. “And with a friend. Of good family, I’m sure. Who you are about to introduce me to.”

“Mother-this-is-my-friend-Remus-L’eauPin, Remus-this-is-Mother.” Sirius pulls out a chair, scraping the legs on the floor as loud as he dares, and throws himself into it. Remus takes the chair next to him, settling into it as properly as if he were the one who’d had etiquette smacked into him, not Sirius. 

Remus offers up a polite smile as Mother takes her seat at the foot of the table. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard a great deal about you, of course.”

Mother raises an eyebrow at that. She’s not stupid. She knows the kind of thing Sirius is likely to have said about her. Like that time she’d decided to teach her sons about blood magic, with them providing the blood, of course–thank fuck for dittany is all he can say. Sirius rather likes Remus’s scars, but he’s never fancied having a set of his own.

“L’eauPin?” Mother responds finally, enunciating with care. “The French wizarding aristocrats from Lake Geneva?” Mother’s frostiness melts by a degree or two. “A very good, very old family. I know them.”

Sirius nearly groans. Of course she does. Regulus’s mouth twists to the side but he keeps quiet. Smart.

Remus folds his hands in front of himself on the table, smile going a little strained. “No. My family is not from Lake Geneva.”

Sirius lets his leg nudge Remus’s. This is not the time for truth. Seriously. Most families have wine cellars. The Blacks also have an oubliette. He should know. He used to lock Regulus in it.

Mother’s eyes have sharpened. “No? Who are your people, then?”

Remus’s gaze rests on Sirius for a long moment, letting him sweat. Then he gives Mother a cool smile. Sirius’s heart, which was in his stomach, soars—Remus is going to lie his fuzzy arse off, like only he can do. 

“Distant relations, no doubt.” Remus’s voice drips with the weariness of one whose people are always having to fend off the importuning masses. “My family does live by the water, of course—hence the ‘L’eau’ part of our name, but we have always preferred our fortress-on-an-island to the more accessible areas of France.”

Mother is leaning forward now, pleased. “Mont St. Michel? The walled city with the ancient bridge to the mainland?” A hint of triumph enters her voice. “I always told Orion that place had to have been constructed by wizards. It’s far too remarkable for any Muggle architect.”

Remus shrugs, in that ‘of-course’ way of the natural aristocrat. Sirius isn’t sure where he learned it. He’s got the uncomfortable idea it might have been himself. That’s one of the odd parts of living with the same blokes year after year. You rub off on each other in unexpected ways, start seeing yourself in the ways that your friends move and speak. It’s like one of those wizarding mirrors that show who you really are, rather than what you look like. No wonder those fucking things always end up smashed. 

Sirius muses on that as Remus spins an ever-more convincing pack of lies regarding his upbringing as a pure-blood wizarding boy in Mont St. Michel, Mother hanging on his every word. Even Regulus is starting to look convinced. 

It’s not a talent you think you’d find in a teacher’s pet like Remus, now is it? Course, you’d have to be a good liar to get by as a werewolf in wizarding society, Sirius figures. That’s a pretty big secret to hide. 

Sirius squirms a little in his chair, feeling his cock stir as Remus continues spouting massive loads of Mont-St.-Michel-related codswallop. Mother’s sucking it down like pre-dinner drinks and isn’t it embarrassing and weird, the way listening to Remus lie turns him on? Is it because it’s a reminder of Remus’s hidden depths, of the wolf beneath the skin?

They’re all a little different beneath the skin, he supposes. Look at him—secretly heart-sick and pining for his best friend. Pathetic and lovelorn and queer and loyal and living for the moments when Remus lets Padfoot hop up on his bed for a good night belly rub.

Sirius feels a rush of envy—James might be lovesick too but at least he doesn’t have to hide who he wants. He’s got it bloody easy. Then again, at least Sirius’s pash is actually shagging him. James has been hexed by Lily twice this week already. Peter is the one who’s really lucky, he guesses. There’s a bloke with no hidden depths whatsoever.

Plates of hippogriff eggs in aspic come floating up from the kitchen. Father hasn’t returned from the hunt yet, but Kreacher must have given up on holding the first course for him.

Regulus looks down at his, a frown creasing his forehead. “Aspic is gelatin made from boiled down hooves. Hippogriff hooves.”

Mother bestows a drink-widened smile on him. “You said you like aspic. I had Kreacher make it specially.”

Sirius pokes the translucent jelly, watching the poached egg within it wobble. Actually, no, Regulus hates aspic. He just knows that Sirius hates it more. How fucking Slytherin of him to ask for it. 

Regulus doesn’t look happy though. “I didn’t ask for a hippogriff egg inside it.” He pushes the plate away, making the egg and jelly shiver. “Malsy Parkinson says it’s wrong to serve a child in something made from its mother. That’s why she won’t eat cheese with meat.”

Remus perks up. “Jewish dietary law is quite philosophically interesting—”

Mother rolls right over that, regardless of how impressed she is with the ‘L’eauPin’ family name. “Parkinson?” she snaps at Regulus. “What are you doing listening to a little nouveau riche social climber like that? They’ve barely been pure more than two generations, I’m sure.” She stabs her fork viciously into her aspic, right down into the egg. It bursts open, leaking bright yellow fluid all over the quivering jelly. 

Sirius has his wand strapped to his forearm—you don’t come to the Black house without easy access to a weapon. The moment Mother’s distracted, forking the dripping mess in, he twitches his arm and mutters a Banishing Charm. The egg and aspic disappear with a quiet pop. Sirius breathes a sigh of relief. Family dinners became a lot more bearable once he learned how to do that. 

Remus gives him an imploring side glance. Sirius bites his cheek to stop himself from smiling, and banishes Remus’s aspic too. A little warm feeling spreads through him—he loves doing things for Remus. Regulus gives him a hopeful glance too which is a bloody lot of cheek in Sirius’s opinion. He could have asked for a simple green salad as a first course, now couldn’t he? 

Downstairs, the door bangs open. Father calls out to Kreacher to come and get whatever it is he bagged today. Mother scowls—he’ll want it served as the main tonight, of course, throwing her whole menu off. Paws sound on the stairs, nails clattering on polished wood, and a fierce-looking dog, a Rhodesian ridgeback a little larger than Padfoot, stalks into the room. There’s still blood on his fur from whatever he killed today but that disappears as he transforms back into a wizard in perfectly polished black robes. 

Mother looks at Remus to see if he’s impressed as Father takes his seat at the head of the table. “There are only seven registered Animagi, you know. It’s a very difficult skill to acquire.”

Remus makes politely admiring noises that Sirius knows are hiding a laugh and that warm feeling inside himself heats up a little more. They have a secret, the two of them, and anyway, Mother just praised Sirius even if she didn’t realize it. If she knew Sirius was an Animagus too, she’d have had nothing good to say about it. 

“Learned how in South Africa,” Father says gruffly, already reaching for the carafe of red wine that Mother has made sure is near at hand. A pack of crups tumble through the door, noisy and adoring and settling around his feet. “Spent some time with the Ministry there, don’t you know. Keeping the Zulus down and all that.”

“Savages,” Mother sniffs. She flicks her fingers and the carafe floats towards her and pours a generous measure into her wine glass. “They don’t even have wands.”

“They don’t have wands because they’re not allowed to have wands! You put them in jail for having wands!” Sirius’s rage bubbles up, hot and fast—he’s been down at the anti-apartheid protests in London last summer. He knows all about the Soweto uprising. He’s not fucking ignorant. “The Ministry down there is full-on evil and I’m ashamed you have anything to do with them!”

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, boy.” Father turns that look on him, the one that reminds him how very hard Father can hit. “They still had wandless magic. Wasn’t like we made them total squibs.” He goes back to chewing, grinding hard like it’s Sirius he wants to be tearing with his teeth. “For all the good it did them. Got cursed by a chief once. Hung his two boys for rebellion and what did he do? Said I’d have the same visited back on me. Said my line would end in tragedy.”

Mother leans forward. A bit of aspic is stuck to her cheek, glistening in the light. “And then Father came back to London and wooed me and our line is thriving and they’re still dead. That shows you who was right.” 

Sirius wonders what the penalty for matricide is. He’s underage and there’s definitely mitigating circumstances. He’d probably wouldn’t get much more than a decade. 

“So,” says Remus into the silence that falls on the table like it usually does between bouts of vicious argument. “I imagine Africa is an interesting place to be an Animagus.”

“Rhodesian ridgebacks are sighthounds. They were bred to hunt lions.” Regulus pretends he’s informing Remus, who nods politely. Really, he’s mocking Sirius. As if it’s something Sirius never thought about before, the whole Gryffindor lion thing, with a lion-killer for a father. 

Sirius tries not to shiver as Father tucks hungrily into the egg-in-aspic on his plate. He sneers at Regulus instead. “You’d be a lap dog, wouldn’t you? A fluffy little cruppy always begging for a treat.”

“And you’d be a bloody Grim,” Regulus snaps back, face angry, mutinous. “Severus says—”

Sirius fires a hex under the table, right at Regulus’s crotch. How dare he bring up that evil greasy bastard? Regulus just smirks and Sirius sees the bread plate is missing from Regulus’s table setting. That’s an old trick, the plate-between-the-knees-to-ward-off-hexes bit. Sirius is almost proud—he’s the one who invented it, to keep their nasty Uncle Cygnus from using his psychic-fingers trick. 

Father pays no more attention to them fighting than when the crups go at it, which is probably why Saur has his ear half-chewed off and Sotor has scars all down his flank. Anyway, the main is floating in now—venison. A plate settles in front of him, a massive steak on it. It’s barely cooked and dripping blood—Kreacher hardly had time to sear it, let alone do a proper roast. 

Sirius’s stomach rumbles and he breathes in the delicious scent of it. That was an amazing side benefit to becoming a canine Animagus—Father’s contribution to meals have become mouth-watering rather than stomach-turning. He sneaks a peek at Remus, who is looking similarly delighted at the rawness of it. A werewolf’s dining preferences don’t get much satisfaction at Hogwarts. 

The table goes silent as everyone except for Regulus tucks in. He’s staring forlornly at his plate, watching as a bead of blood drips off the tine of his fork. If they were still friends, Sirius would let him in on the stash of Muggle crisps and chocolates he’s got hidden in his room upstairs. He hasn’t been up there since this summer but that stuff never goes bad. It’s practically magic. 

Mother wipes her mouth ridiculously delicately on her napkin and turns to Regulus. “You mentioned Severus. How is that poor boy doing?”

Sirius would groan if his mouth wasn’t so full of meat. First of all, Mother only brings up Snape to needle Sirius—she’d been beyond furious when she’d learned that Eileen Prince’s half-blood boy had made Slytherin when her pure-blood heir hadn’t. If Sirius were honest, that was probably why he’d started tormenting the slimy bastard—if Mother hadn’t always been harping on it, asking why he couldn’t have been more like Snape, he probably wouldn’t even have noticed the git was alive. 

“Severus?” Father pauses, fork on the way to his mouth. “Eileen’s boy?”

Regulus brightens. It’s not often Father pays attention to anything he says. “That’s right. Eileen Prince is his mother. That’s how he got his secret nickname, you know, the half-bl-“ 

Father grunts. “Eileen. Remember her from school. Slytherin, year or two below us. Had nice hair.”

Sirius laughs. “Snape doesn’t. He’s a limp-locked—”

“He had really nice hair too!” Regulus crosses his arms and looks furious. “You did something to him, you and your stupid ‘Marauders’.”

Sirius laughs again and licks his fork. It’s true, of course. James had been quite reasonably pointing out how very ugly Snape is and Lily had jumped to Snape’s defense, saying but he has quite nice hair, lovely and fluffy. That was a mistake. James is the heir to the Sleekeazy fortune—he knows a thing or two about greasing down fluffy hair.

Remus frowns—he never approved of that prank—but Sirius can hardly stop grinning. It’s been one of their triumphs. Snape’s about driven himself round the bend trying to de-curse his hair, but he’s never going to figure out how. He’ll live a greasy sod and die a greasy sod and Sirius damn well isn’t going to spill the secret, not even if Dumbledore himself says to.

On that good note, Sirius reapplies himself to his plate, which is nicely free of distractions such as vegetables. Remus has already cleared his, down to the fat and gristle. Father notices this and gives Remus an admiring nod.

A little shock of pleasure runs through Sirius. Father approves of Remus, even if it’s for something as stupid as a shared love of bloody meat. Somewhere deep inside himself, in the most pathetic part of his soul, he knows that’s why he brought Remus home. To introduce the bloke he loves to his family. To have Remus here at the family dinner table. To have them smile at Remus and accept him—which they have, even if it’s on the basis of lies and appetite. Maybe he’s Esau, stealing his father’s blessing, but still Sirius feels brilliantly happy for having gotten it.

Father shoves the rest of his steak in, glances at Remus in a good-fellow way, and calls out to Kreacher to send up the whole slab. He taps the wine carafe too and it refills itself, ruby red liquid catching the light as it tips itself up and pours wine into first his glass, then Mother’s, who certainly doesn’t need it—she’s already gone quiet, which means she’s practically paralytic. A moment or two later the dead stag floats in on a cadaver-sized platter, ribs curving up, head left on, staring sightlessly up at the cut-crystal chandelier overhead. Its antlers span the table, pushing plates and water goblets out of the way and Remus suddenly looks a little sick. 

Sirius puzzles on that for a moment, then it hits him in the gut—James is a stag. He would look like this if he died in that form. He would taste like prime venison, be as warm and lean and satisfying on the tongue. It’s one thing to eat the meat. It’s another to look the prey in its dead eyes. 

He understands, in that moment, a bit more about why Remus suppresses his instincts so harshly. Deer is the natural prey of the wolf. And what about Sirius—he’s a wolfhound. That had always struck Sirius as absolutely proper, funny even, but now he realizes that wolfhounds were bred to bring down wolves. Does Remus worry about that? Has Remus seen fault-lines within the Marauders that have only just occurred to Sirius while staring at a half-eaten deer on the Black family table? Does he imagine a future where they turn on each other? 

Also, possibly it wasn’t quite as funny as he’d thought when Padfoot had eaten that rat in front of Peter. But anyway, the deer’s already dead so why not finish it off? Sirius shrugs off his misgivings and happily accepts a second helping. Remus seems to struggle a little too, but under Father’s gaze he decides to play the role of the good guest and graciously accepts more too. This isn’t a table that’s seen a lot of temptation resisted over the years. 

Regulus is still looking absolutely furious, presumably on Snape’s behalf, the prat. Remus had pointed out once that Regulus probably identifies with Snape because both of them spend a lot of time on the butt end of Sirius’s pranks. Who cares? The only reason Sirius ever listens to any of that psychology textbook stuff is because it gives him an excuse to curl up on the bed with Remus and read over his shoulder. What’s Regulus going to do about it anyway?

“Father,” Regulus says, with a tightness to his smile that makes Sirius wonder if he’s just thought of some way to get back at them, “don’t you ever worry about dangers in the forest when you go hunting?”

Father grunts incuriously. “No.” 

“Aren’t there will o’ the wisps? We learned about them this year. They might bewitch you and lead you astray.”

Sirius wishes he knew where Regulus was going with this, the shifty little Slytherin bastard. 

Father pauses in his next forkful. “Got a Charm. Keeps them off.”

“What about dryads?” Regulus continues, as if he’s got nothing on his mind but a discussion of this year’s Defense topics. “Our teacher said tree nymphs might look pretty but they can be tremendously fierce.”

Father takes a mouthful and chews. “I don’t bother the trees. They don’t bother me. Not there for firewood, now am I?”

Regulus shoots a sly look at Remus. “And werewolves? What about them? Don’t they hunt there too?”

Mother rouses from her stupor at the word. Sirius is frozen in place, mind whirling, Remus tense at his side. “Werewolves?” she says, slurring it a little. “Disgusting things.”

Sirius forces himself to relax. Regulus is fishing—he’s sure of it. Snape wouldn’t have dared tell—he’s too afraid of being sent down. Regulus is smart, though, and observant too, and he spends way too much time watching the Marauders with angry, jealous eyes. He might have noticed that there are never any pranks on full moon nights, but what does that prove?

Remus takes his cue from Sirius and leans back in his chair, easy, as if the topic means nothing to him either. 

“Werewolves,” Mother says again. She pushes her plate away, slopping juice onto the white linen. “Procyon was bitten by a werewolf.”

The room goes quiet, except for the sound of father sawing at his meat. Sirius can’t stand silence. Or mystery. “Who’s Procyon?” 

“My brother.” Mother is staring into a space that might have been the deer carcass and might have been the past. “Younger than me.” Her gaze flicks to Sirius. “He looked just like you. He would have made a handsome man.”

Sirius boggles, and not at the implied compliment, bizarre though that is. “Mother, you don’t have a younger brother named Procyon. Your brothers are Uncle Alphard and Uncle Cygnus.”

Regulus is staring too, looking like he’s wondering if Mother’s finally lost her bloody mind. Sirius is wondering it too. “There’s no Procyon on the family tapestry.” 

Mother nods vaguely. “He was six.”

Doubt enters Regulus’s eyes. Sirius tips his head—Regulus has always been the better student, the more attentive son. What does he remember about the tapestry that Sirius doesn’t? 

“Children don't appear on the tapestry until they're eight,” Regulus says uncertainly. “That's right, isn't it?”

Remus stirs next to him, intellectual interest apparently trumping his unease. “Eight. The age of reason, according to the church.”

That sounds about right to Sirius. By eight he was definitely starting to have a few reasonable doubts about his family.

“That’s how the Charm was woven, yes.” Mother flicks her hand. “Didn’t want the tapestry muddied up with endless dead babies, I expect. Can’t be sure they’re going to live until they’ve got a few years on them.”

Sirius suspects it had more to do with murdering the obvious squibs before they showed up on the family tree. Poor Marius Black, the only squib who made it on the tapestry—he was lucky not to be smothered in his sleep.

“Our father was out in the country one day.” Mother crooks a finger and the carafe floats her way, obedient as a well-trained dog. “Shooting grouse.”

“Shooting Muggles is more like it,” Father says with a bark of a laugh that Sirius realizes sounds oddly like his own, only more gravelly. 

Mother laughs at that too, a high-pitched harpy-like screech. “He shot one all right. Complete accident of course. The boy simply wandered into the way.” 

Father grunts. “He should have paid the family off. That’s the way to do it if there’s a fuss.” 

“Offered them something fair, I’m sure.” Mother shrugs. “The boy’s family was nothing to speak of but they had a few connections. He’d have given them a fair price.” 

“They didn’t take it?” Regulus is almost whispering.

“The boy’s father said he wanted revenge, not blood money. Said my father’d taken his youngest and he’d pay him back in kind.” Mother sips her wine slowly now, almost temperately.

Bloody hell, Sirius wishes he had a drink too. The strongest thing he’s likely to get here is butterbeer and he’d need a hundred or more of those to approximate the blood alcohol level he wants.

“What happened?” Remus looks like he knows he shouldn’t ask, knows he can see the answer already and will only regret confirming it. It’s like hearing a knock inside a cupboard and opening it because you want to think it’s just a boggart. It’s never just a boggart though, is it?

Mother’s fingernails dig into the tablecloth, scratch it convulsively. “The father was a werewolf, it turned out. He came for Procyon the next full moon.”

Remus’s hands twist in the tablecloth too. His water goblet shivers. He’s looking at Mother strangely, maybe even hopefully. “You have a brother who’s a werewolf?”

“Of course not.” Mother’s face twists in disgust. “Once we were certain of the infection, my father took him out to the courtyard and put him down. There’s no place for a disease like that in the Black family.”

Horror freezes Sirius in place. Remus is rigid at his side. This can’t possibly be true.

Father snorts and points a finger at Sirius. “You needn’t look so shocked, boy. Once the infection sets in, they’re not human anymore. Best to get it over with, put the beast out of its misery.” He cracks a bone and sucks the marrow thoughtfully. “Good man, your Grandfather Pollux. Most people haven’t got his guts. They’d have taken the boy off to St. Mungo’s and had some Healer put him down. Not how it should be. Should take care of your family yourself.”

Sirius’s throat is painfully tight. Remus is holding onto his chair, all pretense of relaxed ease gone. If Remus’s parents had been like his, he’d be dead. Words finally burst out of his gullet. “This entire family is what’s disgusting. Our grandfather murdered his own six year old son and we’re supposed to be proud of that?” 

Regulus opens his mouth to make excuses for them, like always, not that either Father or Mother look like they care what Sirius’s opinion is. “Werewolves are dangerous,” Regulus says with imploring eyes. “If they hadn’t put him down, they might all be dead.”

Father is laughing again, a sound that now grates on Sirius’s soul. “They’re not that dangerous, not to any decent wizard. That’s not why you can’t let them live.”

Mother’s face twists even deeper into disgust. “Honestly, Orion. There’s no need to get into that at the dinner table.” She moves her pursed-up lips into the semblance of a smile, directed at Remus. “What will our well-bred guest think of us?”

“Nonsense,” Father booms. He calls down to Kreacher to bring the pudding but leave the meat, in case he wants a little more. “They’re old enough and they’re boys, to boot. A little ugly truth isn’t going to ruin their delicate constitutions.”

Remus has gone sick pale beside him. Sirius is wracking his brains—he needs a distraction and he needs it fast. Some piece of madness that will allow them to slip away, that will overshadow this whole conversation in their minds.

His father shakes his head. “Sex-crazed, all of them. That’s what the infection does to you.” Father pushes his plate out of the way to make room for the bowl of trifle settling in front of him. “The wolf takes over the primal functions of the brain. Appetite. Aggression. Sex. Even in human form, even when the moon’s gone, all that still belongs to the wolf.” 

Another bowl of trifle smacks down in front of Mother. Then one for Regulus and one for Sirius and one for Remus too, who’s starting to look like he wants to die. Sirius isn’t sure he’s ever going to look at cream and jelly again without feeling sick. 

Father’s spoon digs into his pudding. “You see what I’m saying here? You know what we tell boys who haven’t the self control to keep their hands out of their pants. ‘Don’t play with yourself, or the werewolves will smell it and come for you.’ Why, I hear even the Muggles have a saying to that effect. And there’s truth to it, see?” He sucks in a huge mouthful of trifle, his lips closing wetly around the spoon. “So you see what had to be done. No choice really, unless you think your Grandfather Pollux should have just stood by while his youngest grew up to be the type of beast who fucks the family crups.”

“He was six years old!” Sirius finds himself screaming suddenly, standing there with his chair pushed back so fast it’s fallen over behind him. “He was a person, not a beast, not a disease and our family killed him!”

Now everyone’s looking at him. Even the dead deer, it feels like, and it gives him an idea for that distraction. He twitches his wand inside his sleeve and mutters “ _Animatus_ ”.

The carcass rolls over and climbs to its skeletal legs, trusses breaking as it moves. Its head rises proudly, antlers held high, and a fire is now burning in those eyes. It might as well be James himself as it stamps a hoof, misty breath pouring from its mouth. Another moment and it’s charging straight at Father, antlers swinging down, body half-consumed. Father changes shape as it barrels into him, leaping up with teeth elongating into fangs and a growl in his throat.

Sirius doesn’t stay for the replay of Father bringing down their dinner, take two. Dishes are flying and glass is shattering and Regulus is squealing and Mother is cursing in an extremely ungenteel way. Sirius grabs Remus’s hand and in the melee, they flee the room. Then they’re running down the stairs and past the portrait and out into the street into the cool night air. 

Somewhere down the street kids are laughing like little hyenas and smashing their conkers together. Remus pulls his hand away as soon as they slow down. Sirius scowls and faces him, but Remus has already turned, face hidden in the shadows. 

Frustration boils up inside Sirius. They need to talk but it’s Guy Fawkes night and there are Muggles everywhere celebrating the death of the man who tried to blow up Parliament. Not too far away a bonfire is burning, smoke scenting the air, and people are singing, sounding happy and alive. They think it was a Catholic-Protestant thing--they don't even know he was yet another fucking pure-blood wankstain trying to bring their government down and when will it ever end? Remus, still in shadow, pulls out his wand and signals.

Seconds later, the Knight Bus screeches to a halt in front of them. It always comes when you need it. The more you need it, the faster it comes—Remus must be fucking desperate to get out of here. Sirius trails up the bus steps after Remus, blinking in the light. “We fucking need to talk,” Sirius says to Remus’s back, and Remus hears it—Sirius can tell—but still he doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t even look at him. Thinks he can get away with this whole night never being mentioned. 

Well, fuck that, thinks Sirius, as he pays the driver. The things Father said—they meant something to Remus. So they’re going to talk, damn it, and Remus is going to tell him what it all meant, and everything—everything—is going to come out. And that’s a promise.

But every single bed and seat on the Knight Bus is occupied. The family dinner hour must give rise to an awful lot of wizards and witches in need of emergency transport, Sirius thinks sourly. He and Remus have to hang onto the straps just behind the driver’s seat, where conversation is impossible, not least because all their attention is focused on not being thrown against the windows each time the bus takes off or makes a sudden turn. 

Well, at least they don’t have to make this trip by train, with the horror of the meal enveloping them both like wrackspurt mist. Sirius is still so angry that he feels almost ill. When the bus disappears into a wizarding tunnel and the lights come on in the carriage, he glimpses himself in the bus window’s reflection and sees that his face is as flushed as if he’s got a fever. 

In contrast to Sirius’s reddened cheeks, Remus is ashen. He looks as if he might pass out, he’s so pale. Yet when the bus finally disgorges them outside the Hogwarts gates, Remus sets off without even waiting for Sirius to get off the bus, crossing the grounds at a near run and then, once they’re inside the castle, taking the steps up to Gryffindor tower three at a time.

Their dorm room is empty. There’s some kind of exhibition game being played down on the pitch—an inter-house match for all the new team members to show off their skill—and most of the school is down to watch. Sirius is grateful for that. He doesn’t need Prongs and Wormtail barging in until he and Remus can get this sorted. 

Remus seems to have no such wish, though. He heads straight for his bed, throws himself down onto it, and draws the curtains shut. 

“Well, fuck you, too,” Sirius says. “I warned you, didn’t I? I bloody well warned you they’d be horrible.” A fresh streak of rage bursts through him, and it’s a relief to let it discharge through his wand, which is suddenly in his hand and sending a Blasting spell at the chessboard that’s set up on his and James’s side of the room. The black king flies up into the air and explodes into dust. Sirius aims his wand at the board again and the queen goes up the same way. He’s got a fantastic aim. If he cared a whit for sports, he’d have been a really ace Beater, he reckons. He blasts the white king and queen off the board as well, for good measure. 

“That’s James’s chess set,” Remus says from behind the curtains. 

“Then I’ll fucking buy him another, won’t I?” Sirius says, and makes the entire board explode with a single, well-pointed _Bombarda._ “I’ll buy him ten, with the sodding Black fortune, I will.”

There’s silence for a minute, and Sirius feels it building in him like a curse he needs to throw. He understands why people cast Unforgivables, so help him, he absolutely fucking does. He pivots on his heel toward his own bed. His Muggle book of international motorbikes is lying open on the pillow. He aims his wand. 

“Padfoot.”

Sirius hesitates. 

“Come on,” Remus says, and his voice sounds so weary. 

The wand clatters to the floor as Sirius’s hands shift, his weight coming forward as he drops to all fours. The colors of the room fade into grey-scale as his dog vision takes over. And his heart settles, because now his purpose is clear. 

Remus has called him. He must go. 

He trots to the edge of Remus’s bed and pokes his head under the heavy red velvet, a surge of joy bursting through him as he enters the space where Remus’s smell is more concentrated than anywhere else in the world—here, when Remus is lying on his bed and the curtains are closed. Padfoot scrambles awkwardly up and flops down beside Remus, his boy, his master, his alpha, his everything, his person who is lying there with his face turned away. Complicated smells radiate off him, unhappy smells that make Padfoot begin licking at Remus’s ear, at his cheek, trying to clean the unhappiness off so that the other Remus smells can get out and make Remus happy again. Which how could they not do, when they make Padfoot so very happy? His tail wags in anticipation of uncovering the happy Remus scents, and he licks more earnestly, climbing on top of Remus and nosing into his neck, trying to get his tongue beneath the fabric that the humans always hide their bodies in because they have no fur. 

Remus makes a sound that might or might not be protest, and rolls over, pushing Padfoot off his neck. Padfoot takes that as license to lick Remus’s face instead, and oh, the flavors on Remus’s face! Sweat, bus diesel, Remus fear, Remus hurt, animal blood, pudding sugar, Regulus, candle wax, spotty chin, Remus arousal, Remus want, Remus love! Remus’s hands are stroking Padfoot’s ears, offering still more scents and tastes: palm sweat, leather strap, Hogwarts gates, forehead oil, trouser pockets, Knuts. And then, the hands reach down to rub his belly! Padfoot arches into it, his whole body quivering with pleasure. 

Remus pets him for a long time, lying on his side and rubbing Padfoot’s stomach until the human’s fear-hurt-shame smells are covered over by the petting-Padfoot smell: the special scent of Padfoot’s happiness and Remus’s progressive relaxation. When Remus’s hand finally stills, Padfoot huffs out a sigh. Remus never goes on petting as long Padfoot wants him to. 

And then Remus sighs too. “I’m glad you don’t hate me,” he says. 

It takes the words a while to translate through the dog’s mind. Normally Sirius doesn’t bother to come forward and get them, smells being so much more accurate than the primitive, scentless language of humans. But these words of Remus’s must have got Sirius’s attention because Padfoot feels himself being pushed down, his awareness receding as the human consciousness surges forward and takes over again.

Sirius sits up, his hands going to his abdomen, already missing the touch of Remus petting him there. “Why would I hate you?” he asks. “After that ordeal, it ought to be the other way around.” 

Remus rolls onto his back and turns his face away. “I feel so dirty,” he says. 

“Because of what my—what those awful people said.” Sirius doesn’t even want to call them his parents. “Don’t listen to them, Remus. It’s all bullshit, you know it is.”

“No it isn’t.” Remus brings his fingers to his temples and begins massaging them as if his head aches. “Not all of it.”

“Okay. I mean—I know it’s true that they killed that poor boy. It makes me want to kill them myself, Remus, I could just—”

“Sirius. Don’t.”

Sirius lies down again and buries his face in Remus’s neck. Even when he’s human, being able to press his mouth and nose to Remus’s skin calms him a little. Or rather, it calms him in some ways. In other ways, it excites him. He presses a hand to his burgeoning erection as he mouths a long kiss down the line of Remus’s tendon, biting gently as he goes. He needs to be good, now, for Remus. And he needs to be good _to_ Remus as well, especially after the nightmare of Orion and Walburga. Sirius rolls over, his hard-on coming to rest against Remus’s hip. 

“Other things your father said are true as well,” Remus says, ignoring the invitation.

“Such as?” Sirius tries to remember the conversation. He just wants to get off now, and the whole terrible meal is a bit of a blur, honestly, except for the part about murdering a six-year-old. 

Remus fiddles with the edge of his pillowcase, not looking at Sirius. “Remember what he said, about what pure-bloods tell kids who—who play with themselves?” 

“What, that whole ‘if you touch yourself, the werewolves will come for you’ bullshit?”

“It’s not bullshit,” Remus says. “They came for me, after all.”

Sirius rises up on his elbow at that. 

“Moony. You were bitten because your dad narked off a bloody sociopath. The same reason that poor boy—my uncle Procyon—was turned. It was revenge.”

“A sociopath?” Remus says, quirking an eyebrow. “Someone’s been reading my Muggle psychology books.”

“Greyback is an evil man, Remus. He bit you because he’s evil. Not because he’s a werewolf.”

Remus ignores this. “What I was trying to tell you,” he says instead, “is that werewolves _can_ smell it if you’ve wanked. At least, I can.” 

“Really.” Sirius hopes his voice is casual, but this is frankly astonishing. Not only the fact of it, but that Remus is telling him at all. Sirius had expected to have to prod much harder.

Remus hesitates, his shoulders tensing. Then he nods. “A couple of days before and after full, I can tell. If someone passes me a quill or a potions ingredient, I can smell if they’ve wanked, and how recently, more or less. Even if they’ve washed. I can smell it on their hands, Sirius, just like your father said.”

“Bloody hell.” Sirius doesn’t know why he’s so surprised. After all, when he’s Padfoot, he can certainly smell recent wanking on the other Marauders, though he usually bypasses sniffing hands in favor of aiming his nose straight at their crotches, where the scent is even better. 

“Don’t tell anyone,” Remus says.

Sirius flops back down beside Remus. “I won’t,” he says. “Not even James.” He badly wants Remus to keep talking, to share more of this part of himself he usually keeps so secret. It makes Sirius feel close to him. Makes him feel that Remus wants him, and trusts him again. And Merlin, but he wants to feel that all the time. “Will you pet me?” he asks. “Even though I’m not a dog now?”

Remus smiles, his face softening into affection. He reaches out a hand and slides his fingers into Sirius’s loose hair, begins stroking his scalp. Sirius feels a tingle of pleasure eddy down through his body, just the way it does in Padfoot’s. It calms Remus as well.  
Although Sirius can’t smell that with his human nose, it’s evident enough in the way Remus’s shoulders loosen, the way his head tilts to one side and his sandy hair flops over his forehead. He also looks tired now, though. And who wouldn’t be, after that nightmare dinner?

The thought of his parents reminds Sirius of something else his father said, and he wonders if he dare ask Remus about it. It’s a rare mood that finds Remus this willing to talk about himself, but perhaps seeing how bad Sirius’s home life is has made him less ashamed of his own secrets. 

“Moony,” Sirius begins, “When my father said—” he hesitates. _When my father said werewolves are sex-crazed,_ he wants to say to Remus, _is that how you feel? Because I would help you out with that, any time._

But Remus is looking at him sharply, his hand gone still in Sirius’s hair.

“When your father said what?” Remus asks, and Sirius can almost see the wolf’s snarl on Remus’s face, just behind the barrier of that careful non-expression Remus cultivates, that look of mild disinterest that is really anything but. In the frank challenge of Remus’s alpha gaze, Sirius loses his nerve. 

“When my father said…” he tries to think of how to cover himself. “When my father said the Muggles have their own thing they say to their kids to get ‘em not to wank—what is it, do you know?” That should be innocuous enough. 

Remus sits up then, his back against the headboard, his long feet knocking against Sirius’s hand on the coverlet as he draws his legs under his chin. He hunches over himself, his hair flopping in his face, his arms wrapped around his knees, but after a moment, he reaches out and resumes stroking Sirius’s hair once more, and Sirius’s heart gives a little lurch of happiness at the realization that Remus is petting him without being asked. 

“Yeah, I know what Muggles say,” he says after a moment. “They don’t mention werewolves outright. But the allusion’s still there.” Remus rests his cheek on his knee and looks down at Sirius, his hair falling back from his face to reveal a soft, bitter smile. “Shall I tell you how I learned it?” he asks. 

Sirius nods, trying not to look too eager.

“I must have been about seven,” Remus says after a moment. “My Muggle nan, my mum’s mum, was visiting. She and my mum were having tea in the kitchen and I was in the loo, you know, messing about. Not exactly wanking. I mean, I was quite a small child. But my mum had these pots of face cream, and I was—experimenting.” Remus’s cheeks turn pink, and he turns his head so that Sirius can’t see his eyes. “And when I came out, my nan gave me a look and said—I can still hear her voice—she said, ‘I hope you weren’t being naughty in there, laddie. You don’t want to grow hair on your palms.” Remus’s fingers tense against Sirius’s scalp. “So that’s what Muggles tell their kids—that if you wank you’ll grow hair on your palms. I suppose that over the years, the part about a werewolf smelling you out and biting you must have got lost from the threat, but the endgame’s still clear, isn’t it? Wank and you’ll turn into a beast.” He clutches a fistful of Sirius’s hair in agitation. Sirius startles, and Remus relaxes his hold again.

“Sorry, Pads.” 

“‘S all right,” Sirius says quickly. “I like it.” It makes him hard, actually, when Remus does that. He imagines Remus as a little boy, smearing face cream on his willy at age seven. Discovering himself. Those early sparks of pleasure, something that was all his. Secret but delicious, like a hidden stash of sweets. Not shameful yet. Just special enough to want not to share. “Did you know what your nan meant?” he asks. “At the time, I mean.”

Remus presses his lips together. “It got all mixed up in my head,” he says. “She was a Muggle, so she didn’t know I was a werewolf—she didn’t even know we were wizards, for Merlin’s sake—but because she somehow knew I’d been playing with myself in the loo, I thought—Christ.” Remus pulls his hands free of Sirius’s hair and presses them to his mouth. “I thought that since she knew that, and somehow she also knew I grew hair on my palms once a month, and she linked the two together, I thought—I thought it was my fault I’d been turned. Because I’d been wanking.” 

“Merlin. That’s fucked to buggery.” 

Remus is silent. He chews on his thumbnail, his eyes nowhere.

“I’m glad you told me,” Sirius says into the silence. Remus glances down at him, worried, perhaps, that Sirius is mocking him. But Sirius isn’t. It makes his heart ache to think of Remus as that small boy, his childhood pleasure becoming the cause of his misery. 

He reaches up and slides his arm awkwardly around Remus’s drawn-up shins. “That’s really fucked,” he says. “And Moony, about today, about my family. I knew that would be fucked too, but I never would have dragged you over if I’d known it would be...well. Quite as fucked as that.” 

“It’s all right,” Remus says. “I’m used to it.” 

“I wish I’d known you then,” Sirius says, running his fingers up and down the outer seam of Remus’s trousers. “When you were experimenting in the loo.” He imagines climbing up to the tiny window of the loo in the Lupins’ cottage near Oxford. He’d peer in at the open casement, watch Remus rub cold cream along his tiny penis. And then he’d whisper, _It’s all right. I experiment too. ‘S good, yeah?_ And then Remus would know it wasn’t his fault. 

When Remus doesn’t reply, Sirius butts his head against Remus’s hip. Remus doesn’t take the hint to resume petting him, though, and Sirius feels rejected. _If you won’t shag me, I’ll bloody well go find someone who will,_ he thinks of saying, which isn’t fair, of course. He and Remus do shag; have been shagging all term, if you call what they’re doing shagging, and Sirius most certainly does because it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s just that he wants to do more of it, and especially right now, because he feels so bloody _off_. Unsettled in his human self, still furious about the dinner, and angry on Remus’s behalf as well, because Remus won’t let himself feel it. He shoves at Remus’s drawn-up legs, trying to get him to stretch them out again. He knows Remus feels off as well, even if he’s better at hiding it. 

He pushes on Remus’s thigh once more and Remus relents, stretching his legs over the coverlet. Sirius promptly lays his head in Remus’s lap. “Experimenting’s good,” Sirius tells him, looking up through his eyelashes at Remus. “You can experiment on me any time.” 

Remus laughs then. “How is it that the conversation always seems to work back around to ‘Yet Another Reason to Touch Sirius Black’s Prick’?”

“You said it, I didn’t.” Sirius reaches down to palm himself through his robes and keeps his eyes on Remus, holding his gaze, letting Remus see how much Sirius wants him right now. Remus rolls his eyes and sighs, but the sigh turns rough at the end, and beneath Sirius’s head, Remus’s hips twitch. He breaks the eye contact to look down at Sirius cupping himself. Sirius, never one to turn down attention, begins stroking, drawing his hand up his shaft so that his robes outline the length of his cock, now fully hard. 

Remus looks at him a moment, and a noise slips out the back of his throat that is not unlike a growl. He presses his lips together, and for a moment Sirius panics that Remus is going to turn him down again. But then Remus’s eyes flicker up to Sirius’s face, and it’s not rejection that’s dilating his pupils, making him catch his lower lip between his teeth.

“You want to do an experiment?” Remus asks, a hint of teasing in his voice. “Fine. Why don’t you show me.” It’s a command, not a question, and Sirius’s cock gives a throb inside his robes. 

“Show you?” he repeats, not sure what Remus is getting at, although whatever it is, Sirius is definitely on board.

“Show me how you wank.”

“You’ve seen—I mean, you—we’ve done it together,” Sirius says, confused into stating the obvious. They wank each other quite frequently, in fact. Just last night, for example, in this very bed. They usually lie on their sides and snog first, and then Sirius’s hand finds Remus’s prick, and Remus finds Sirius’s, and it’s fucking brilliant how good the whole thing feels. It’s one of the reasons Sirius won’t tell Remus he’s in love with him, because he couldn’t bear it if Remus freaked out and put a stop to their getting off together.

“But I want to watch you,” Remus says. He smiles faintly. “Go on. Turn into a beast in front of me.”

And that goes straight to Sirius’s cock too. To be fair, if Remus had said he wanted to watch Sirius floss his teeth, Sirius would probably get a hard-on from that, even, and be in front of the loo mirror in a heartbeat, unspooling that crazy Muggle string. 

He’d rather wank, though. 

“Vanish my clothes, then,” he says, trying to sound casual. “I left my wand on the floor.”

And then he’s naked, lying on Remus’s bed, and Remus is sitting above him, still fully dressed. 

Sirius spits in his hand and slowly strokes back his foreskin, watching Remus’s face. Remus’s eyes flare amber and then dark, his face clouding with an arousal so palpable Sirius can feel it, Remus’s magic changing the composition of the air between them. He slides his hand up and down his cock in a loose fist, and when a pulse of precome leaks out, he pauses in his stroke to smear the fluid over the glossy head of his prick. 

Remus bites his lip, his hand sneaking up under the folds of his robes, and then Sirius hears him fumbling with the zip on his trousers. 

“Like what you see?” Sirius asks, trying to sound cheeky and failing, even to his own ears. 

Remus nods, his hand shuffling around beneath his robes. Sirius sets up a rhythm, his hand working his prick, now slick with spit and his own precome, which is leaking out more than usual under Remus’s gaze. Remus’s arm begins to move, short, staccato pumps beneath his robes.

“Can I see you too?” Sirius asks. 

Remus hesitates, then pulls his robes up and back over one shoulder. And there’s his fucking gorgeous prick and balls, pulled out over the top of his pants, nesting in all that warm brown fuzz that Sirius wants so much to bury his face in. 

“Lie down next to me,” Sirius begs. “Lie down and touch me. Let me touch you.” When Remus doesn’t move, Sirius reaches his free hand out and brushes his fingers over the soft hair of Remus’s forearm. “You can still watch me,” Sirius says. “I just want you to feel you at the same time.”

And then Remus is stretching out beside him, shoving his pants and trousers down his thighs and tangling his socked feet in Sirius’s bare ones. He angles his cock forward and makes the tip of it touch Sirius’s, and damn if that doesn’t bring Sirius right to the edge—the sight, and the feel—of the slick heads of their pricks kissing. 

“Wank for me,” Remus commands again, his voice husky. 

Sirius does, stroking himself just the way he likes, twisting and not too fast, his fist tightening a little at the knob, and Remus watches, masturbating himself, his eyes darting between Sirius’s cock and face. 

“Show me how you do it,” Remus urges, his breath gone all ragged.

“Show you how I come,” Sirius blurts, and then he’s spilling, shooting off with Remus’s hot eyes pinning him to pleasure, and Sirius manages to keep his eyes open because even his orgasm isn’t enough to override the thrill of Remus looking at him like that, his eyes so dark and hot, his slackened mouth suddenly twisting as his climax hits too, and then Remus is coming all over both their hands. 

And no werewolf is going to smell it and come for them because the werewolf is already here. The werewolf is sliding his come-streaked hand up their bodies, and pulling Sirius close. The werewolf is kissing him, the werewolf is sucking their sticky fingers clean. 

“That’s a bit of all right,” Sirius says at last, letting out an enormous sigh and rolling onto his back. Remus stretches out beside him, slinging one arm over Sirius’s waist. Sirius loves that arm, loves that it’s slung over him, loves the person it’s attached to. Remus tightens his arm around Sirius, just then, as if he can read Sirius’s thoughts. Sirius sighs into it, relaxing further into the post-orgasmic bliss of being held in Remus’s arms. 

“When everything’s gone balls up,” he says after a while, “getting off’s the only thing that really helps, you know?” His eyes fall on the destroyed chess set. “I get so angry sometimes. I get a bit out of my head. But then if I can have a really good wank, or, you know”—he squeezes Remus’s arm—“have it off with you, Moony, it’s like it resets everything. And then I don’t...hurt so much.” 

Then Sirius’s chest tightens and he curls in on himself, feeling too exposed. He’s never admitted so plainly, not even to Remus, that beneath so much of his moodiness, his cruelties, his carrying on, is just that one simple truth—he’s hurting. If only he could just have Remus touching him all the time, though, he feels like he could handle anything, no matter how painful. 

And then all at once, he gets it. 

“Moony.” Sirius rolls over to face him. 

“Hmm.” Remus is finally relaxed, his eyes heavy-lidded and his smile easy and slow.

Sirius shakes his arm. “Bloody hell, Remus, I’ve got it. What I just said, about how a good wank is the only thing that gets me sorted?”

“A good wank _or_ a good shag, is what you said.” Remus’s voice is drowsy. “With yours truly, I believe. Accuracy is important.”

“ _Remus._ Listen a sec. That’s exactly it. What if you could wank your way through transformation, or, or even shag your way through it?” 

Remus blinks at him. Then he looks away. “Not funny, Sirius.” 

“I’m not joking.” Sirius sits up on his knees, fairly bouncing on the mattress, he’s so excited. “Remus, listen to me. My father even said it, over dinner. He said, ‘werewolves aren’t that dangerous, not to any decent wizard.’ And then he said, ‘werewolves are sex-crazed,’ and I know it’s fucked to hear him say it like that, but listen to what _I’m_ saying: what if transformation only hurts so much because everything in you needs to get off? What if that’s the reason it’s so painful?”

“That’s not the reason,” Remus says. But he’s biting his lip and frowning the way he does when he’s puzzling over a difficult bit of homework. He’s considering the idea.

“Listen, Moony.” Sirius grabs fistfuls of the coverlet, searching for words that will explain a concept he’s only got hold of by the thinnest whisker. “Pure-bloods tell their kids, ‘don’t wank or the werewolves will come for you.’ But what if the werewolves come not because they want to hurt you, but because they smell the sex? What if it’s not about violence at all? What if _that’s_ the made up story?”

At last his words seem to be having some effect. Remus holds himself very still for a minute. Then he pushes himself up into a sitting position. Sirius will take that as encouragement—he presses on. 

“Think, now. Actually think about this. We’re always hearing about the werewolf packs in Wales, right? In the forests. But there isn’t an epidemic of people being turned into werewolves in Wales, is there? Is there?”

“No,” Remus admits. 

“And if werewolves really just wanted to bite people and turn them, there would be. Wales should be nothing but werewolves, if that were true.”

“I’m listening,” Remus says. “Go on.”

“Remember when we nicked those books on Ancient Greece from the Restricted section?”

Remus nods. Of course Remus remembers; it was he who nicked them, Remus being the one who could convincingly lie his way out of it if he’d been caught. It was at the end of last term, and the two of them had wanted so much to see some proof that they weren’t the only ones. That there were other blokes who did what they’d started doing. They’d heard stories, of course. Gossip, changing room talk. But they wanted to see, and in the Restricted book, they had seen: actual images. Pictures of old mosaics and decorated vases. One of the mosaics showed two young men holding each other, one thrusting inside the other’s thighs. And there was a picture of a vase that showed one bloke fondling the other’s genitals. Proof, then, that it wasn’t just Remus and Sirius. Proof that all over the world, some blokes had always been this way. The book had had essays too, and it is of these that Sirius is now thinking. 

“Remember what we read about the Mystery cults?” he asks. “The ones to the god of wine. And the—the rituals they do together. What if that’s what’s actually going on in Wales?”

“Are you saying,” Remus begins. He traces a finger over the red and gold coverlet, following the outlines of a fleur-de-lys. “Are you saying the wolf packs are really sex cults?”

Sirius hesitates. He is saying that, he thinks, but even at the best of times, Remus is very, very touchy when it comes to other people’s opinions about werewolves. Sirius doesn’t want to bollix this up. “I’m saying,” he says slowly, praying that his mouth won’t run away with him and ruin everything, “that we should do an experiment. You and me.” 

“And that would be what, exactly?”

“I’ll help you. During your next transformation.”

Remus smiles, but it’s tired, a little pitying, even. “You do help me, Pads. I don’t know what I’d do without you. But you’ve no idea. Sometimes, in the days right before full, even after we’ve had it off, I have to get up and go into the loo and—you know. Wank again. A few more times.”

“Why don’t you wake me? I can always go around again. Look.” He takes Remus’s hand and presses it to his softened cock, still a bit sticky from the sex they’ve just had. And sure enough, beneath the touch of Remus’s warm palm, Sirius’s prick begins to swell.

Remus shakes his head, drawing his hand away. “I can’t make you do that for me. Not when—it would be too much. I can’t, Sirius. Drop it.” Remus presses his hand against Sirius’s knee instead, a very poor substitute for cock-touching. “I know you mean well,” he says. “But there is no cure for lycanthropy. My parents dragged me all over Europe and half of Russia looking for one. It doesn’t exist.”

“I’m not trying to cure you.” Sirius moves Remus’s hand back to his groin and holds it there more firmly, letting himself rock into the touch. Remus’s ears go faintly pink, and Sirius bets Remus has got at least a halfie of his own under that pillow he’s holding over his lap. “I’m not trying to cure you,” he repeats. “I promise. I’m not trying to make you not be a werewolf. If anything, I’m trying to do the opposite. I’m trying to help you be one all the way. The way you’d be if wizards didn’t keep trying to control you.”

Remus pulls his hand away, and why the fuck does he keep doing that? He wants to get off again, Sirius can tell by the way the flush is creeping up his cheeks.

“If someone stayed with me during transformation,” Remus says, “I’d kill them.” He scowls at Sirius. “You of all people should know that.”

It’s a low blow, and one Sirius deserves, of course, after what he did to Snape. Old shame prickles across his face, but now something else is prickling there too: this new suspicion that what Remus says—what he’s been told all his life—might not be true. _Would_ he really have killed Snape? What if everything they’ve been told about werewolves is wrong? Remus has never met another one besides Greyback. And Remus can’t meet any other werewolves, can he, since all they’ve all been drummed out of of society and are hiding in the forests in Wales. Sirius wants to say all of this aloud, but he’s not stupid. He has to tread very carefully here.

“You’ve never hurt Padfoot,” he says. “Well, not badly, anyway, and you can’t turn me when I’m Padfoot. We’ve certainly proven that.”

“But Padfoot always comes in _after_ I’ve transformed.” Remus is still frowning, his face uncharacteristically stormy. He picks at a ragged thumbnail. “I don’t even know what you’re suggesting,” he says.

Sirius thinks Remus knows perfectly well what he’s suggesting, but if he wants it spelled out, fine. “I’ll stay with you as Padfoot,” Sirius says. “And when you start to transform, I’ll—you know.” Sirius looks away. He can’t come right out and say it after all. “I’ll help you,” he finishes weakly.

Once the words are out, he feels how true they are, how very much Padfoot wants to help, in any way he can. It’s a surge of desire that takes hold of every cell in his body, and he nearly quivers with it, Padfoot riding just below the surface of his human shape, Padfoot who wants nothing more than to be a good dog, to help, to be praised by his human, his alpha, his mate. It’s the only thing he wants really, and he has to force himself to hold his human form and not shift, because Padfoot wants so badly to be petted just now, to have his belly rubbed, to hear Remus tell him how good he is. A whimper escapes his human mouth, a sound that, in the baldness of its need, is not entirely human.

Remus hears that. His eyes narrow, the shadow of the wolf across his face like a cloud, like moonlight through a cloud, like Moony. Then he pushes the wolf back again, and his face closes.

“You can’t stay with me while I change,” he says with finality. “It’s not like in children’s stories, you know, where one minute you’re a perfectly good human, and the next you’re a werewolf. At least, it’s not like that for me.” He chews on his thumbnail. “One healer my parents took me to did say that when I’m older, transformation will go faster. I don’t know if that’s true, but right now it takes hours. The wolf takes over slowly, and it’s agony.” He looks away. “You can’t spend those hours with me, Sirius. I might kill you, and if I did that, I think I’d kill myself.”

Sirius knocks his head against Remus’s thigh in irritation, because now Remus is just being melodramatic, however much he might believe what he’s saying. It’s just that it’s stupid, going at life that way. “You won’t kill anybody, you git,” he says. “You don’t try to kill Prongs, do you? Even though deer are a wolf’s natural prey. Don’t you get it, Remus? You’ve been lied to.”

Remus’s face betrays nothing at all, which means something intense is happening inside him. Sirius waits, but Remus doesn’t say anything.

“Look, Moony,” he says finally, his impatience getting the better of him. “If you’re that worried you’ll hurt me, I’ll Incarcerous you first.”

At that, Remus seems to come back to himself. “Magical restraints don’t work on werewolves, you first-year twat,” he says, making his prefect face.

“I’ll chain you up, then. We’ll get some of that steel chain from Hagrid, and cuffs, too, like what he uses to hold the Hippogriffs. Even a werewolf can’t break through that. I’ll tie you up whilst you’re still human, and I’ll stay with you, and I’ll—I’ll get you through transformation.”

“As a dog?”

“No, as a sodding pygmy puff. And don’t give me that horrified look. I was there last month in Hagrid’s hut, too, you know.”

Remus turns bright red. Sirius grins.

“I know you were out wanking in the privy that day,” he says. “Right before last month’s full moon, wasn’t it? Must have been pretty desperate.”

“You know I can’t help it right before full.”

“But why right then? It was when Hagrid’s bloodhound tried to—”

“Sirius, stop.”

“—hump your leg. Wasn’t it?”

Remus turns completely away from him, but Sirius can see the flush on the side of Remus’s neck. He’s got Remus. He’s totally fucking got him. 

“Drop it,” Remus says. His voice is cold, his neck absolutely scarlet. “I can’t help it, so drop it for once in your life, can’t you? You’re just embarrassing me.”

But Sirius can’t drop it now; it’s like asking Padfoot to drop a lovely nasty thing he wants to eat. “You’re a canine,” Sirius says. “And so am I. I don’t give a shit if right before the full moon you want to fuck crups. Perhaps you can even imagine why Padfoot might think that’s a point in your favor.”

But Remus still won’t turn around, and Sirius loses his temper. 

“For fuck’s sake, Remus, don’t you get it? Everything they’ve told us about sex is wrong. If I’d listened to my parents, the only way I’d ever get off is huffing on top of some pure-blood girl who’s on her back thinking of England, whilst I secretly think of fit blokes to keep my prick up long enough to produce an heir to the sodding Black fortune. It’s lies, all of it. So don’t be such a fucking prude. Do you want your transformations to be bearable or don’t you?”

Remus finally looks at him. 

“It’s okay with me,” Sirius says more gently. He strokes Remus’s arm again, and he gives him his best smile, the one he uses for talking himself out of trouble and other people into it. But it doesn’t work, because he wants this so badly he can’t keep his face right. “Padfoot would like it,” he confesses. “And I would—I want—Remus. Please let me stay with you this time. I’ll tie you up if you want, only Padfoot really wants to help. I really want to.” Another whine slips out, and Sirius turns it into a word. “Please.”

~

 

Padfoot lopes down the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack with a dead tusk-rat in his mouth, juice dripping through his teeth and down his chin. He is a very good boy—any other dog would surely succumb to temptation and eat it. Not Padfoot! Padfoot is bringing it to the wolf, the alpha, the one he adores above all others. Somewhere in the recesses of canine brain flickers the human idea that these feelings are to be hidden. Ridiculous! He flings himself up the stairs, claws scrabbling for purchase on the slick, rotting wood. 

He noses open the door, adding another dead-rodent smear to the door jamb. A marvelous, wonderful smell hits his nose—the wolf-who-walks-upright is here! His teeth sink deeper into the carcass in his mouth, he’s so excited, but still he trots over and drops it on the pile. Then he sits, tail wagging, looking up at the wolf-with-two-legs. By the time the silver moonlight slides across the floor, the big wolf will be here, all fur and smell and teeth and romp and hunt and love.

His tail thumps against the floor. Why does the two-legged wolf not look happy? Why is Padfoot’s head not being skritched and his belly not rubbed? He should do something? But what? He should ask what’s wrong, that’s it. The wolf’s foot is tapping in irritation and his arms are folded and he smells all cross. Padfoot’s tail creeps underneath him and he hangs his head. 

“Sirius. Honestly.” The wolf snaps his fingers, eyes on the massive pile of dead rodents that should bring such joy. “Change back. Right now.”

If Padfoot had fingers he’d scratch his head in confusion, but the moment he thinks of fingers it all comes flooding back. He could have fingers—in fact, he does have fingers, and hands, and two legs not four—and all of a sudden he’s upright and his name is Sirius Black. He’s a person, he hates his family, he’s Gryffindor to the bone, and he’s in love with Remus Lupin. 

“What?” Sirius folds his arms too, mirroring Remus. He toes a tusk-rat back into the mound. “I got you some transformation munchies. I’m telling you, the change won’t be nearly as bad if you let yourself eat and stretch and all of that. You need food to fuel a change like that and you need a decent amount of space to do it in. Of course it’s going to hurt more if you’re starving.”

Remus just keeps looking at him. 

Sirius closes his mouth. It’s an old argument and yeah, maybe the moment that Remus is at maximal moon-related grump isn’t the time for it but it’s not like he’ll talk about it the rest of the month. Bloody hell, it’s the worst of all worlds. Remus cycles like a girl and clams up like a bloke. ‘What?”

“How many tusk-rats did you catch?” Remus glares at the thigh-high mound, which Sirius is starting to realize might be excessive, even for a werewolf’s appetite. “All of them?”

“Sorry, do you prefer biscuits? A nice digestive and a good hot cuppa while you change?” Sirius scowls down at the mound, rather than scowling at Remus. He knows what this is about—Remus can’t bear seeing the evidence of his less-than-human appetites. “Should I have ordered up a nice, refined plate of madeleines, perhaps?”

“Don’t.” At any other time of the month, Remus would sound like a prefect chastising a first year. There’s too much growl in it now for that. Frankly, Sirius likes that. It excites him. Sometimes—not that he’d ever say this—he wishes Moony got to come out a little more often. A couple nights a month isn’t enough.

As soon as he thinks that, he’s filled with shame. Remus rips himself apart, scratches and scars himself during the change. He’s never allowed Sirius to stay in the room for it before, but Padfoot huddles outside the door and listens, every time. He howls along with the anguished wolf and he scrabbles at the door and he’s desperate to come in, but Remus has always kept him locked out, wards proof against both dog and wizard. Trust a werewolf to know the best door-locking spells.

Tonight, though, it’s different. Remus has finally agreed to let him stay. Sirius watches as Remus sheds his jacket, dropping it on the bed next to his robes. Sirius doesn’t question why Remus is finally letting him in, partly because he’s afraid the answer will turn back to ‘no’ and partly because he thinks he knows the reason. Things have changed since that dinner at Grimmauld Place. The Black family in the flesh aren’t quite as funny as the characters in the stories that Sirius tells over dinner in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

Apparently, the Black family is so effed up that Remus figures transforming into a monstrous man-wolf is less horrific in comparison. Sirius would laugh about that if it didn’t kind of want to make him cry. 

Remus comes back over, face still dark as he looks down at the mound of worm-tailed pelts. “What’s Peter going to think of this? Didn’t that occur to you?”

“Peter’s not going to see it. He and James aren't coming to the Shack tonight. They're meeting us later in the Forest.” Sirius wasn't going to risk the other two showing up here tonight, not with how he means for the evening to go.

Remus relaxes at that but the frown doesn't quite leave his face. Sirius is about to get really irritated when he realizes that now the scowl is just for show—what Remus is really hiding is a wince. Deep inside, he feels Padfoot whine in sympathy, desperate to do something for his wolf....

Wait! He does have something. Sirius trots across the floor and grabs the jacket he’d left crumpled in the corner. He rustles in the pocket and his fingers close on something hard. He grins triumphantly and pulls it out, flinging it across the floor as he undoes the miniaturization spell. A grand piano swells like it’s been hit with an _Engorgio_ charm, piano bench popping into place next to it. Sirius slides into his place on the bench.

Remus stares, eyebrows drawing together, a frown on his forehead. “What the ever bloody hell, Sirius?” It’s still dark outside the window but he shivers, the way he always does when the moon starts to climb the sky. “Is that a grand piano?”

“I stole it from the music room. Flitwick’ll never mind.” Sirius opens it and the keys gleam ivory in the light. He’d wracked his brains earlier to think of all the things he could do to ease Remus’s transformation night and this had popped into his head. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.”

A muscle twitches all down the side of Remus’s face. “Breast. It’s music hath charms to soothe the savage _breast_.”

Sirius thinks that can’t be right. He’s never been much interested in breasts himself but to hear James tell it, they’re soft and squishy. Nothing savage about them at all. Still, Remus is rubbing his arms the way he does when the bones inside them start to ache, so it’s best not to argue. Sirius puts his fingers to the keys and starts to play.

He plays very, very well. He knows this, but even still the sounds of Chopin, smooth and beautiful as they roll out under his touch, surprises him. It had been the one thing he and Mother could agree on—she’d wanted him to gain a pure-blood social grace and he’d wanted an escape, something he could do that would keep her off his back. Odd, that an unholy pairing like snobbery and loathing could result in something that sounds as ethereal as this.

Remus is calming as the melody plays on. He doesn’t go and relax on the bed like Sirius had hoped, but he does at least lean against the wall. See--Sirius knew it! Remus has always been wrong, the way he punishes the wolf. It just needs soothing. Music and love are what moonlight craves.

Sirius is about to launch into the next measure when something silver catches his eye, a flash of metal in the darkness just past Remus’s foot. Sirius pauses in his playing, then stops the song with a bang. Remus catches the look and at once goes defensive, arms crossed, shoulders tight. 

Sirius jumps up and pads over to get a closer look. Coil upon coil of tarnished silver chain lie hidden in the corner, enough to smother a small dragon. He wills himself not to make a fuss. “Fuck’s sake,” he says instead as he crouches down to pull a manacle out of the pile, “we could take the whole Slytherin Quidditch team captive with this.”

A laugh huffs out of Remus. “Don’t you dare suggest that to James.”

“Where did you even get all of this?” A bit of wonder enters Sirius’s voice. No one would ever let _him_ make off with a massive load of monster-grade restraints.

Remus comes over to stand beside him. “Hagrid has a whole shed full of chains. Said I could take what I needed.”

Sirius rubs the manacle between his fingers. It numbs his magic, makes his fingers prickle and sting. “Why silver? It might be traditional but it’s stupid. Nothing will stop the transformation. At most it’ll slow it down a bit, which means more pain.” His resolve not to fight disappears. He stands up, right into Remus’s handsome, self-hurting face, finger jabbing out. “You’re always trying to punish the wolf.”

Remus’s eyes flick to the tusk-rats. His face twists into a snarl. “And you want to feed it.”

Sirius feels Remus’s hot breath on his lips. They’re close enough for a kiss. Or a bite. He wants to point out that, according to the Black family, dragging a six-year-old newly-made werewolf outside and putting him down is also traditional, but he doesn’t. Sirius might not be convinced of the dangerousness of werewolves, but after years of living together, he knows full well just how dangerous Remus Lupin the human is.

“You’re in charge,” Sirius says with a butter-won’t-melt-in-my-mouth tone that makes Remus roll his eyes. Sirius stoops down, grabs some chains, and starts dragging them over to the bolts Remus has installed in the other wall. 

It doesn’t matter anyway. Sirius hides a smile as he plays the good little dog, first attaching the chains to the lower bolts. Remus sits on the bed, shedding clothes piece by piece, carefully folding the jacket and trousers he can’t afford to replace. Sirius gets the piano stool to stand on to reach the upper bolts, casually retrieving his wand from his coat while he’s over there. 

The thing is, Sirius knows how to turn silver into stainless steel—it’s a tricky spell but he mastered it last summer. Piece by piece, he turned the family flatware from pure-blood heirlooms into Muggle metal. When Mother finally caught on, her fury was absolutely glorious. 

As he finishes with the chains, Sirius touches them with his wand, whispering the spell, feeling them turn from silver into strong-but-painless steel. Frankly, if Remus doesn’t think Sirius can survive being trapped in a room with an unrestrained werewolf, he’s never seen Mother in a rage. He’s always suspected there’s a little harpy in their lineage, pure-blood claims notwithstanding. 

Remus finally sighs and stands up and comes over, still wearing his pants. Because God forbid the bloke you’ve been wanking with for months see you walk across the room naked. It doesn’t surprise him, though. Remus has always been the only one of them with any hint of modesty. The rest of them don’t have a lick of it—James loves his body, Sirius doesn’t care who sees him, and Peter knows no one’s looking anyway.

Remus steps between the four-point restraints. When Sirius cinches the chain tight, Remus will be outstretched between the bolts, arms pinned high above his head, legs spread wide. Sirius’s mouth goes dry at the thought. He wonders if Remus would chain him up like that if he asked, but now isn’t the time—Remus is already holding his hands out, ready for the manacles. 

Sirius snaps them on, one by one. They close with a thick metallic sound and the chains clink as he pulls them taut, raising Remus’s arms high and wide. His armpits are hairy and his arms muscular but pale. Remus turns his head, shame painfully clear on his face. Sirius nuzzles in, licking and nipping along each arm, luxuriating in the male-scented sweat that’s gathered there. Remus’s body has more sense than Remus’s head—his prick is swelling with each touch of Sirius’s tongue, tenting his pants. 

Sirius drops to his knees. Remus spreads his legs and Sirius snicks on first one leg clamp then the other. He tightens the chain, pulling each foot up next to its bolt. Remus wants that, clearly. Wants to be treated like some vicious beast.

“These aren’t silver,” Remus says, rubbing his wrists against the metal.

It’s too late to make Sirius change it back, though. None of this is necessary anyway—Sirius knows with the same sure magic he brought to the Marauder’s Map that he’s safe with Remus-the-wolf. They’ve played together moon after moon, chased the same rabbits, rolled together in the thickets of the Forbidden Forest. Moony is his friend-in-fur and if Remus wasn’t so busy pushing away everything the wolf had to say, he’d know that too.

Finally, Remus is as secure as a maximum-security prisoner bound for Azkaban. Moonlight has just hit the windowsill, but hasn’t yet started to creep across the floor. Remus groans, low and sudden, and Sirius isn’t sure where the sound hits hardest—his soul or his groin. Both seem to swell together, growing larger, filled with desire for both man and wolf. The floorboards are hard beneath his knees and he grabs his wand and taps them, makes them softer. He’s going to want to be down here for a while, he’s sure.

“Sirius.” 

Remus’s voice has dropped into the back of his throat, the word full of whine and snarl. Sirius glances up in alarm, then chides himself for feeling that. Remus’s face looks like it always does—human, that is. He isn’t covered with hair or anything, unless you count the faint sand-colored stubble on his jaw and upper lip. And the soft sandy curls all over his legs. And of course, beneath his y-fronts, the tight, wiry curls his cock juts out from. And then he’s got that lovely dusting of fuzz on his arse and bollocks.... 

“You should change now,” Remus says, cutting in on Sirius’s thoughts. Sirius blinks up at him, and Remus closes his eyes. He’s in considerable pain already; Sirius can tell by the way the corners of Remus’s eyelids are twitching, as if he’s holding back a wince. Sirius rests his cheek against Remus’s thigh, then turns his head and licks a slow stripe up through the soft hair on his legs. Remus’s muscles tense, and a new sound leaves his throat, high and uneven. Sirius licks further up Remus’s inner thigh and again Remus whimpers, jerking forward in his metal cuffs. 

Then Remus shakes his head and glares down at Sirius. 

“You should change now. Padfoot.” 

At the sound of his name, the dog mind surges forward. _Yes here alpha please pet._ But Sirius tugs Padfoot back. 

Padfoot struggles a moment, then gives up and obeys. _Sit stay wait good dog._

Sirius runs his hands up Remus’s thighs, his fingers creeping up over the thin cotton material of his pants. There he stops, just short of touching Remus’s cock. Remus’s hips thrust forward and Sirius grins in satisfaction. 

“Come on, Sirius. Stop faffing about and change already. It’s not safe for you to stay human.” 

“Oh, is that the reason?” Sirius looks up at Remus from under his lashes and opens his mouth in a slow grin, his teeth playing with his lower lip. “You look pretty safe to me, all trussed up. This, however—” Sirius hooks his index fingers inside the elastic waistband of Remus’s pants and pulls the material away from his body and down over his hips. Remus’s cock bounces up against his belly, velvet-flushed and glistening at the tip. “This looks like it could be dangerous.” 

“ _Sirius._. Don’t be such a fucking— _oh_.”

Sirius wraps his hand around Remus’s prick and draws the cockhead inside his mouth, letting his lips slide softly over the wet head. He holds perfectly still for a moment, relishing the way Remus’s body trembles all over and then goes taut. Then Sirius sucks off slowly, pulling the foreskin back up as he almost lets Remus pop out of his mouth. Almost, but not quite. Sirius holds him in place as he sucks him in again, flicking the tip of his tongue into the folds of Remus’s foreskin, fluttering against the softness, then dabbing at the sudden pulse of clear, bitter fluid leaking from Remus’s slit.

“Sirius. For fuck’s sake. Oh, God.” 

Sirius pulls off completely, and Remus’s foreskin slides back down his shaft, the head of his cock wet with Sirius’s spit. “You like that, Moony?”

“Fuck you. Put me back in your mouth. You’re such a goddamn— _fuck_ —”

A shudder of pain wracks through Remus, his shoulders convulsing forward. Sirius dives onto Remus’s cock and begins blowing him in earnest and almost immediately Remus’s body relaxes, even slumps a little. Sirius works his mouth, and then Remus’s thigh muscles tense under his hand, but not in pain. Sirius has found the rhythm Remus likes. 

Merlin, but Sirius loves having Remus’s cock in his mouth. He wishes Remus would let him do it more. A lot more. If they’re pissed, Remus will always let Sirius blow him, but it’s only once in a while when they’re not pissed. Sirius can’t see how cocksucking is any gayer than tossing each other off during naked snogging, but that’s how it seems to work in Remus’s tortured mind. 

Not tonight, though. Tonight Sirius is calling the shots. He wraps his fist around the base of Remus’s cock and eases his mouth down over the shaft until his mouth hits the circle of his thumb and index finger. Then he begins bobbing his head in time with the motion of his hand, and his own cock bobs along with him, swelling with the delicious ache of arousal at being here on his knees with Remus Lupin’s hard prick in his mouth. Remus’s hands flutter in their shackles, and Sirius knows Remus wants to hold his head, grab fistfuls of his hair. Merlin, he’d unchain Remus this instant if he hadn’t promised not to. 

He drops his head forward, sucking Remus in deeper. He wants to bury his nose in the fur of Remus’s groin. He tries to slide his mouth even further down the shaft, but he gags, his head jerking back involuntarily. The cock slips from his mouth and Remus gives a sharp cry, as if the loss of contact hurts him. Sirius wraps one hand around Remus’s shaft to calm him, and shakes his wand out of his shirt sleeve into his hand. He points the wand at his throat and whispers a spell, one he’s read about but never dared try. He has to swallow hard as the spell hits, the muscles in his neck contracting, but then the magic takes hold and the back of his throat and his jaw go all lovely and loose. 

The moon has reached the window now, moonlight falling blue and still into the room. Remus’s beautiful, bound body is luminous in this light, long and muscled, the glans of his erect cock shining in the slick fluid leaking from his slit. He twists in his shackles, shuddering. 

“Sirius, please. Please suck me. I need, it hurts—”

Sirius leans through the moonlight, so cool and dim it seems impossible that it could cause Remus such agony. He opens his mouth and feeds himself the sweet heat of Remus’s prickhead, the salt tang of precome stinging the sides of his tongue like good whisky. He sucks Remus in deeper, and yes, the spell he cast is working. He works his lips down Remus’s shaft, Remus’s cock sliding back over his tongue, and this time, his throat stays open. Deeper, more, and then he’s trembling with pleasure at the feel of Remus’s curls tickling his nose, at the scent of him, and the terrible, gorgeous fullness of Remus’s cock buried in his throat. 

He pulls back to breathe, inhaling the perfume Remus’s body, then buries his face in Remus’s groin again. There’s a noise in his ears. It’s coming from Remus, one long continuous moan. 

It’s like a drug, that sound in his ears, filling his ears the way Remus’s cock is filling his mouth, petting the entire length of his tongue. A drug in the relief of knowing that Remus won’t turn away this time, won’t stop petting him, won’t close himself up and leave Sirius behind. 

Sirius grips Remus’s arse with both hands, encouraging him to thrust. The long sound Remus is making cuts off all at once. Remus gasps, then shouts, his body jerking forward. He spills down Sirius’s throat. Sirius swallows, the spunk thick and hot in his throat like another spell, and he’s so close himself, the taste of Remus’s orgasm driving his own forward. He pulls off Remus and fumbles his own cock out of his jeans, and oh God, Remus is still shooting, all over Sirius’s face. Sirius falls into him, burying his head in Remus’s thighs and stroking himself off until his own orgasm rolls through him, coating his hand.

He clings to Remus. _I love you,_ he wants to say. _Remus, Moony, boy, wolf. I love you._

“Fuck, Sirius, I—oh, God.”

Sirius raises his spunk-covered face from Remus’s groin and looks up at him. Remus’s face and chest are flushed. Around his nipples, his usually smooth skin is now dusted with hair. 

“Does it help?” he asks, already knowing the answer.

Remus nods, his bound arms straining in their shackles, and Sirius knows that Remus wants to hold him. He stands up, his knees shaking, and presses his body against Remus’s. Remus’s mouth finds his, fits itself to Sirius’s as if their mouths were made for exactly this. Sirius wraps his arms around Remus’s bound body and holds him while Remus’s mouth captures his, Remus’s entire body pressing forward into the kiss. 

“Let me taste you,” Remus says, and Padfoot’s longing pushes forward, Padfoot understanding what Remus means before Sirius does. _Yes taste scent mate yours._

Sirius brings his hand, sticky with his own come, to Remus’s lips. Remus sucks at Sirius’s fingers and shivers, with pleasure this time. 

“The werewolves smell it,” Remus mumbles, “and then they come for you because—oh, Sirius, the way you taste.” He grins, looking a little drunk. “It does help,” he says. “It does.”

“You want to suck me off in a bit, then?” 

Sirius can see from the flash of desire on Remus’s face that Remus very much does, and isn’t that interesting? 

But Remus shakes his head. “You can’t unbind me. It’s not safe. This is—” he pauses, and Sirius wonders if Remus is in pain again, but hiding it. “This is good,” Remus finishes. “And when I came, I—” he shakes his shaggy head, and in the moonlight, his hair seems to be threaded with silver. 

“What?”

“I didn’t hurt at all. Maybe I— _shit_ ” Remus winces. “And now it’s starting again.”

Sirius shoves his opened jeans down his thighs and hikes up his shirt, wrapping Remus in his arms and grinding his spent prick against Remus’s thigh. Remus’s body answers, bucking into the touch, and Sirius realizes that the thing poking him in the belly is Remus’s cock, already fully hard again. 

He reaches down between them and cups Remus’s balls in his hand. 

“I’m sorry,” Remus says. “I can’t stop it.”

Sirius kisses him once more, rolling his hips against Remus’s erection. “Are you fucking kidding me? Why would you want to stop it when you have me around?” 

He drops to his knees again, grateful for the Cushioning Charm he cast earlier. They ought to get a rug in here, maybe a chandelier to go with the piano. Dress the place up a bit. Next month, he’ll bring candles. He noses along the underside of Remus’s prick, lightly dragging his teeth across the most prominent vein.

“Sirius. Please—”

 _Please what,_ Sirius is on the verge of teasing, but stops himself as a spasm of pain wracks through Remus, who cries out before he can stifle it. Sirius takes Remus’s cock into his mouth again, and watches as Remus’s body relaxes almost at once. 

After a moment Remus opens his eyes and looks down at Sirius on his knees, his lips wrapped around Remus’s cock. And Remus actually chuckles. It’s not quite a laugh, and it’s a little shaky, but it’s not a howl of pain and misery, is it? 

“Well, now we know,” Remus says. “You were right. It’s the sex. And maybe I won’t—I won’t rip myself open if I can just—oh, fuck, I’m coming again—” Remus catches his breath as his hips jerk forward and his cock spurts inside Sirius’s mouth. 

Startled by the suddenness of it, Sirius doesn’t swallow at first, and the semen runs down over his chin. Remus’s arms and shoulders strain forward against the bonds, his face contorted as the orgasm shudders through him, wringing him out before it lets him go. 

When it does, his head falls back against the wall. He’s panting, his face shining with perspiration. After a moment, he looks down at Sirius. “You’re greyed out,” he says, slurring a little.

Sirius wipes his mouth. “I’m what?” 

“Grey. You know. Wolf sight—I’ve just gone color blind. Just now. Sirius.” Remus’s eyes flutter closed. “Would you. Would you keep—”

Remus’s cock is still hard. It hasn’t even gone down. 

“I’d fucking love to,” Sirius says truthfully, and begins sucking him again. 

Remus thrusts, shallowly and not too fast. Two orgasms in ten minutes really have eased the pain, it seems; Remus fucks, then rests a moment, then fucks again, his face easier now. His forehead’s still creased, but only in concentration, Sirius thinks.

“That’s another thing the Muggles tell their kids,” Remus says, speaking even as he fucks. Give Remus Lupin a couple of orgasms in quick succession and he’ll grow positively chatty. Who’d have thought it? Sirius curves his hands around Remus’s arse, loving the hard muscles just under the smooth skin, the soft fuzz dusting his arse cheeks. He loves the way those muscles tense, release, tense again as Remus works his cock over the flat of Sirius’s tongue. “The Muggles say,” Remus continues, “don’t touch yourself or you’ll go blind. But you and me—” he breaks off, his head arching back, his fists clenching in the manacles as he comes yet again.

Sirius is ready this time. He’s so ready he’s hard again. He wants to swallow everything Remus has to give him, and he does. 

“You and me,” Remus repeats, picking up the thought again on the other side of his climax, “we’ll just do it until we go _color_ blind, yeah?” He laughs at his own joke, and Sirius laughs too. Remus is actually laughing. In the middle of transformation, he’s he’s laughing. Somewhere inside Sirius, Padfoot’s tail wags so hard that Sirius has to hold onto Remus’s leg to keep from falling sideways. Remus looks down at him, and his eyes are pure amber. “Sirius,” he says wonderingly, “it doesn’t hurt.”

“Watch me go blind,” Sirius answers, and he gets to his feet again, tipping back his head and exposing his neck the way Padfoot does for Moony. He spits into his hand, his saliva mixed with Remus’s spunk, and begins tossing off a second time. 

He wanks with his eyes locked on Remus’s, his other hand wrapped around Remus’s prick. “I want to come for you,” he says, and it’s so true—he wants his pleasure to belong to Remus. The way Padfoot belongs to Remus. The way Sirius wants to belong to Remus too. It makes his heart ache, how much he wants it. 

“Come for me,” Remus answers, his mouth drawing back, his teeth flashing long in his face as thrusts his hips against Sirius’s hand, and Sirius speeds up on them both, but Remus comes first, his hips thrusting hard into Sirius’s hand, semen spilling over Sirius’s fist. 

Sirius keeps on—he’s so close—and he brings the hand wet with Remus’s come to his own cock, smearing it over his own leaking prick. A few more strokes with that and then he’s there as well. 

He leans into Remus, kissing his reddened mouth. He has to break their kiss to rest his forehead on Remus’s collar bone, bracing himself as the orgasm takes him. He trembles against him, shooting off all over Remus’s belly and shaking with how good it feels, and how frightened he is—but not of the wolf. Of his feelings, of the force of how much he wants Remus, the way it pulls at his body from inside him. Like the moon pulls at Remus. Strong enough to turn tides. 

“Feed me again,” Remus says. Something in his voice is pure alpha, pure Moony. Sirius could no more disobey that voice than he could make the blood stop flowing in his veins. He swipes through the smear of white on Remus’s abdominal muscles and offers his fingers. Remus sucks at them, a slightly drunken look stealing across his face. He slumps forward in his restraints, leaning into Sirius again, adding a new streak of come to Sirius’s shirt, and why is he still wearing a shirt at all? Or jeans, for that matter? He’s got far too many clothes on. 

“Just going to Vanish my kit,” he says to Remus, who nods, still sucking at Sirius’s fingers. Sirius pulls his hand away reluctantly—it’s his wand hand—and as he does, he realizes something. 

“Moony.”  
“Hmmm.”

“We didn’t think of this. I have to unchain you. Padfoot can’t do it. If I don’t take you down myself, you’ll be strung up like this all night.” 

Remus opens his mouth to protest, but Sirius knows he’s right. There’s no way Padfoot could manipulate the manual locks on the manacles.

“I’ll do it now,” Sirius says, before he has time to be afraid. 

“And then you’ll shift right after,” Remus says, his words still slightly slurred. “Promise me.” 

Sirius nods, and palms his wand, just in case. Then, his fingers trembling only a little, he unfastens the restraints, first at Remus’s ankles, and then, his knees shaking even more as he stands up, he gets the piano stool and stands on it to free Remus’s wrists. 

Remus groans, stumbling forward and grabbing onto the bedpost for support. “Padfoot,” he orders, his voice half-growl. “Padfoot, come.”

Padfoot does. In a shimmer of charged heat and fur, Sirius sees the last traces of color in the moonlit room grey out, replaced by the kaleidoscope of fantastic scents as his dog body breathes in, inhaling deeply to get his bearings. 

Sex smell, dead tusk-rat smell, and glorious smell of the two-legged wolf on the bed! And the two-legged wolf is calling him! Padfoot leaps up onto the mattress. The two-legged wolf is naked! Is perfumed with the most delicious sex-smell-taste and Padfoot is going to lick it off him! 

He laps at the being that is neither fully Remus nor Moony, laps at his thighs and cock and the furry nest around it, laps at his bollocks and his arsehole where the sweaty scent is strongest and best. Then he throws himself into licking at the fur under the two-legged wolf’s arms, which is almost as lushly scented. The two-legged wolf is going to become Moony in just a few minutes, Padfoot can tell by the scents. The shape of the Remus body is still here, but the body’s scents are Moony’s. Padfoot has never been allowed through the door when this happens, but now he’s here! And he can sniff and taste it all! Padfoot nuzzles at the two-legged wolf’s groin again. It excites him to smell Moony there, so he puts his paws on either side of the still-human shin and pumps. Their bodies don’t fit together very well like this, but Padfoot will do it anyway—he wants his own sexual scent added to the bouquet. The two-legged wolf brings his hands up to Padfoot’s head, and Padfoot pumps, hips rabbiting, his dog erection slick against the two-legged wolf’s shin bone.

“Sirius.”

Padfoot’s ears prick up, but he doesn’t stop moving because he’s moving against the two-legged wolf; he and the two-legged wolf are fucking!

“ _Sirius._ Sirius, for Merlin’s sake, _shift._ ”

Padfoot hesitates, hips slowing. He has to pay attention when the alpha speaks like that. It’s Remus’s voice, but Moony’s scent. Is it Moony who’s calling for Sirius? Should Sirius come, even though Moony is here? Sirius has never been around Moony before. Should Padfoot fetch him? 

Then Padfoot’s consciousness slips away as Sirius ripples into naked human skin, falling on top of the still-human Remus. Remus heaves upward, gripping Sirius by the arms and rolling them both over, pinning Sirius to the bed. 

“Christ, Sirius,” Remus says, looking down at him and shaking his silver-grey head. “It’s you I want.” 

Is Remus saying what Sirius thinks he’s saying? 

“That’s what I want too,” Sirius murmurs. Not quite able to name it. 

Remus doesn’t reply. He strokes Sirius’s cheek and the touch of his hand is rough and sleek and strange. When he draws his hand away again, Sirius sees that the same silver hair that has sprouted across Remus’s chest is dusted across on his forearms now as well, and yes, on his palms too, appearing in the creases of his palm and in small tufts between his fingers. Sirius captures the hand—paw?—in both of his, and pulls it down the length of his naked body. The fur is thick and shiver-sleek. Sirius’s own body hair, so sparse in comparison, rises up in gooseflesh at the touch of Moony’s soft-rough fur against his skin. 

“That feels so good,” he murmurs. 

“Does it? Does it really?”

“Fuck, yes. Moony, touch my cock with those hands.”

Remus rolls off Sirius, and lies on his side beside him, just as if they’re lounging on their beds in Gryffindor tower. But that’s a world away because now Remus-Moony raises is silver-furred hand and strokes down over Sirius’s bare chest, down to his cock and balls. Remus cups Sirius’s sac, the touch of the fur there making Sirius’s hair rise in brilliant, aching shivers. Then Remus wraps his hand around Sirius’s cock and strokes him, and Merlin, it’s like nothing he’s ever felt. On the downstroke the fur is rough, but on the upstroke it’s smooth again, so sleek and hot on his cock that for a moment Sirius thinks he might come from it, even though he’s not more than half hard. He can’t get it all the way up again just yet after the last orgasm, but fucking hell, the rest of his body can. Every cell of his being is hard for Remus Lupin. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” Remus murmurs, sliding his furred hand from Sirius’s cock to his balls again. “This is usually the worst part, right before I change. But right now—” he cups Sirius’s balls in the nest of his palm and smiles almost shyly. “I’m not hurting.” 

He rests his head on Sirius’s chest. 

“When I tear myself up,” he says. Quietly, into the hollow of Sirius’s clavicle. “Most of that happens—” 

He trails off, his lips pressed to Sirius’s collar bone, and Sirius feels the unspoken ending of that sentence bloom terribly inside him.

“Before you change,” Sirius finishes softly, trying to keep the horror from his voice. 

He should have guessed it. He’s seen the gashes on Remus’s body, the scabbed-over lacerations. This is why the scars linger the way they do when Remus is back in human form: they’re injuries done to human skin, not wolf flesh. It’s when Remus is still human that he tries to tear himself to bits. 

“Oh, Moony.” Sirius rests his head on Remus’s chest. Remus’s heartbeat pounds in his ear. 

“I try not to,” Remus whispers. “But it hurts so much, and then when the fur comes out, I’m so ashamed of it. It makes me feel so dirty, and I try to get it off me. I tear—” he breaks off, and then he’s squeezing Sirius so hard that Sirius thinks his ribs might crack. 

This is one of the things hidden behind the locked door that is Remus Lupin. 

“But you’re not tearing at it now,” Sirius says when Remus finally releases his hold. 

“It doesn’t seem so monstrous now,” Remus admits. “Not with you here.” 

“It isn’t monstrous, it’s brilliant. Remus, it feels so good to me.” Sirius feels so much more than that, actually, but he doesn’t know how to say it. “I’ll do whatever you need,” he says instead. “I’ll suck your cock all night, or Padfoot will if you want. Or you can suck mine. Or you can—whatever you want, Moony. I want to give you what you want. I want to please you.” 

And he didn’t quite mean to admit that, but it’s true. Especially now that he knows just how bad it’s really been for Remus. Sirius feels a wave of rage surge through him—what the fuck is wrong with people, when the best they can do is take a beautiful boy and treat him like a monster, and then lock him in a room by himself and leave him there until he becomes one? Sirius wants to throw something, to rip out the fucking piano keys, tear the stuffing from the bed with his teeth, smash the windows. 

The only thing that stops him is Remus rubbing up against him. Rocking his most recent erection against Sirius’s hip. Sirius rolls into Remus’s arms and feels his anger ebb a little. 

There are Muggle stories, he knows, of children raised by wolves. They turn out all right, those children. They go on to found empires and suchlike. Too bad he wasn’t raised by wolves himself—he’d probably be much saner than he is now. 

Remus’s strong hands slide around Sirius’s arse and pull him closer, grinding their cocks together as they kiss. 

“I want,” Remus says in Sirius’s mouth. 

“Anything, Moony. Anything so you don’t hurt.” 

“I want—oh, God.” Remus drops his eyes. “But I don’t want to hurt _you._ ” 

“I think we’ve proved you won’t, yeah?” 

“No, I mean—” Remus draws back, looking at Sirius. Tongue-tied, but it’s written all over the hunger of his face. Desire, possessiveness, need. Moony shining through Remus, this diffident, quiet boy of terrible power. Moony dragging forward not only the power of the wolf, but the power of the boy himself.

Remus won’t say what he wants, but Moony has said it for him: Sirius can read exactly what’s written in that amber gaze. 

“Yes,” he says. 

Remus bites his lip, shakes his head the way Padfoot does when he’s worrying a stick.

“Yes,” Sirius repeats. “You can. You can fuck me.” Just saying the words aloud sends all the blood in his body straight to his groin. “I want you to. Now, right now.”

And then he’s being thrown sideways, rolled onto his back, and Remus is on top of him, pushing Sirius’s knees toward his ears, lining up.

“Tell me ‘No,’” Remus says, and his body’s trembling with the force of holding himself back. His arms are shaking, and his yellow eyes flash. “If you don’t mean what you said. If you don’t want it this way, Sirius, put me back on the wall. Chain me up again, quick, before I turn.”

“I want it.” Sirius hugs his knees to his shoulders, spreading his legs wider, suddenly aware of the cool air of the room. He’s so exposed, so vulnerable. “Lubrico,” he whispers, his newest wandless spell. His hand turns slick, and he reaches down to prep himself as best he can. “I want you to,” he repeats. His voice is shaky, but every cell of his body is straining for this. “Please, Remus. Moony.” 

The wolf’s eyes gleam in the human face and Remus growls low in his throat, the thickening pelt on his chest bright in the moonlight as he takes his cock in his hand and lines up. 

_It will hurt,_ Sirius thinks fleetingly. Moony is too present to allow Remus to take it slowly, and Sirius has never done this before except with his own fingers. 

He doesn’t care. He wants Remus inside him so badly. He thinks fleetingly of the spell he used to open his throat around Remus’s cock, and tries to wandlessly cast it on his arsehole, hoping he’ll relax there the same way. 

“Please do it,” he begs, clutching at Remus’s shoulders. 

Remus does. Skin pressing on slippery skin, and there’s a flash of heat, of hurt, and then a fullness. Remus is in. His cock is inside Sirius’s body. Remus goes completely still, staring down at the spot where they’re joined.

Sirius digs his fingers into Remus’s shoulders. He can’t speak, but he needs Remus to keep still a moment. The stretch of his anus burns a bit, but it’s really the entire experience that’s overwhelming him. 

Remus doesn’t move, and the stillness grounds Sirius, holding him in place inside the sensation. The only thing that moves are Remus’s eyes. His gaze rakes up Sirius’s body, and when their eyes meet Sirius sees such a look on Remus’s face—a wild mixture of aggression and tenderness and pure lust—that his heart turns over. 

_I can die now,_ he thinks, and takes a breath and remembers that he _can_ breathe. His hand moves to his cock and he begins stroking himself. His hand is slick with lube, and the burn in his arse begins to dissipate, the heat moving into his cock, which begins to swell again. 

Remus’s eyes flicker down, then return to Sirius’s face. 

“You can move now,” Sirius manages to say.

Remus does, thrusting a little further in. Sirius feels overwhelmed again—it’s too big, too much—but Remus pushes in even further and then, oh God, a flash of the most concentrated pleasure Sirius has ever known spills inside him, sweeping away the ache of his stretched rim. 

“Again,” Sirius gasps. “Do that again.” Remus groans and rocks into Sirius again. 

Another burst of that intense pleasure pours through Sirius and he cries out. Above him, Remus looks a little crazed. His hair is falling in wild shocks of silver around his young face, and his amber-changed eyes are full of fire. He’s trying so hard to hold back, biting his lip, his jaw set with the effort of it. 

“‘S good,” Sirius moans. “Oh, God, Moony. Please, please, more.” 

And then Remus is fucking him. He’s really doing it, his hips thrusting, not slow. His head falls back as he fucks, and deep inside Sirius, that place he never knew he had shoots pure, concentrated pleasure all through him each time Remus’s cock brushes against it. 

Another thing that’s been kept secret from them, then. Even the books they stole from the Restricted Section never mentioned it could feel like this. 

And he’s going to come from it, and he’s grabbing at Remus’s shoulders again and whimpering like Padfoot because it’s so good. Somewhere behind the root of his cock, somewhere deep in his arse, the spilling pleasure grows into a flood, pulling him down in its tide. Pulling him under, pulling him apart. It’s going to break him apart, it’s so good. And then somewhere between Remus inside him and Sirius’s hand on his cock he does break, and his orgasm bursts through the break and he’s coming, in wave after wave after wave. 

Remus falls forward on his elbows, his body jerking over Sirius’s as his own orgasm hits. He’s coming inside Sirius. He’s inside him, Remus’s cock and his pleasure is inside him. Sirius’s arsehole clenches around Remus’s cock, the force of his climax still moving through him. Remus collapses on top of Sirius, hips trembling as his cock spasms again.

Sirius hugs Remus to his chest. The silver fur is like a towel against Sirius’s sweat-slicked skin. Remus works his arms under Sirius’s shoulders, trying to hold him as well. His cock slips out of Sirius’s arse, and he puts his mouth close to Sirius’s ear. 

“I love you, Sirius Black.” 

Remus’s voice is so low and slurred and gravelly it doesn’t even sound like him. But it is him, he said it, and the kiss that comes after is Remus too, slow and deliberate and deep. A delicious ache of joy drops through Sirius until he’s stinging with happiness. He sucks Remus’s tongue into his mouth, and something swerves— Weight-volume-temperature-magic—and it’s _holy fuck_ a wolf in his arms. 

A wolf scrambling up and standing over him, paws on either side of Sirius’s shoulders. A massive wolf, challenging him with amber-yellow eyes, a black-lipped muzzle, his fur silver-white in the moonlight save for a dart of brown on his forehead, and another dusting, like a shadow, on his flanks. 

Moony. 

_Moonymoonymoony,_ Padfoot yips inside Sirius, his Animagus magic quivering with the urge to bark out loud.

But Sirius doesn’t shift. 

His human heart is going like mad in his chest. His breath is high in his throat, and every muscle in his body is tensed as he lies there so naked and defenceless on his back. 

He can’t shift, not now. He won’t. 

Because they’re finally meeting. Sirius has never before seen Moony with his human eyes, never touched Moony’s thick fur with human hands. And Moony has never seen him before either, not as a human.

He holds prey-still, rabbit still. This is the moment to prove who they really are. 

Moony’s black nostrils flare, and the short white whiskers on his muzzle quiver. Then he lowers his head, and a huff of wolf-breath gusts across Sirius’s face. And then a tongue long and rough as Padfoot’s is licking him, and then Moony is growling, low in his throat. 

Growling for Padfoot.

And Padfoot has had enough of being kept on Sirius’s short lead all night and he doesn’t care if Sirius is telling him _stay not yet_ because Moony is calling him, and Moony is the alpha, and Padfoot bursts out, trembling all over with the suddenness of the shift, but he’s here now! He’s here! With Moony! 

And Moony is nuzzling him in welcome, his huge head butting against Padfoot’s rear leg. Padfoot squirms, twisting sideways on the bed to show Moony his belly. Moony growls again—dominance, pleasure, power—and nips at the softest part of Padfoot’s neck before huffing in approval, then dropping to his forepaws to touch Padfoot’s nose with his own. 

The wolf jumps off the bed, and Padfoot wriggles up and skitters after him, toes catching in the bedclothes as he leaps to the floor. Moony is here; everything is finally put right. The room is alive with the scent of Moony’s alpha approval, and just as strong is the scent that means there’s been a successful mating. And then there’s the lovely ripe scent of dead tusk-rat coming from the pile just inside the door. Padfoot turns his nose in that direction, catching the rooty, loamy fragrance of the tunnel as well. After they’ve eaten, they’ll run through the tunnel and into the forest, where there will be moonlight, and play, and where Moony will be free. 

Padfoot rolls over on the floor of the shack in happy anticipation, exposing his belly once more. Moony sniffs at his neck, his belly, his rear, telling him with nosing and scents that Padfoot is a good dog, a loved dog, is Moony’s dog. That Padfoot is—that together they are—Pack. This is what is true. Padfoot can smell it. 

~ _fin_ ~


End file.
